Privacy Policy

Cookies:

What is a cookie – The benefits of cookies

We use technologies like cookies and local storage to make our websites easier to use and to tailor content to be more relevant for you. This guide is designed to explain, as clearly as possible, what cookies are; the purpose of those used on our websites; and what options you have to control or delete them – if you decide you want to.

What is a cookie?

Almost every website uses cookie technology. A cookie is a small file that saves Internet settings. It gets downloaded through a browser during the first visit to a website. When you next return to the site using the same device, the browser may check to see if a related cookie is present (i.e. containing the site name) and use the data inside the cookie to send back to the site. This allows sites to recognise that the browser has visited before and, in some cases, vary the content shown to reflect that.

The benefits of cookies

Some cookies are extremely useful, because they can make the experience more user-friendly when you come back to a website you’ve visited several times previously. Provided you use the same device and browser as before, they can, for example, remember your preferences, help us to know how you use our sites, and make the content shown more relevant to your interests and needs. None of the cookies used on our websites collect information that personally identifies you.

This site uses different types of cookie.

We use Google Analytics, a popular web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics uses cookies to help us to analyse how users use the site. It counts the number of visitors and tells us things about their behaviour overall – such as the typical length of stay on the site or the average number of pages a user views.

The information generated by the cookie about your use of our website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.

Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google undertakes not to associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.

Some third party cookies are set by services that appear on our pages. They are set by the operators of that service and are not in our control. They are set by Twitter, Facebook etc. and relate to the ability of users to share content on this site.

Controlling and deleting cookies
If you want to change how a browser uses cookies, including blocking or deleting cookies from our websites (or any other website in fact) you can do so by changing the browser settings.

To control cookies, most browsers allow you to either accept or reject all cookies, only accept certain types of cookies, or prompt you each time a site wishes to save a cookie. It’s also easy to delete cookies that are already saved on your device by a browser.

The processes for controlling and deleting cookies vary depending on which browser you use. To find out how to do so with a particular browser, you can use the Help function within it or alternatively you can visit http://www.aboutcookies.org which explains, step-by-step, how to control and delete cookies in most browsers.

Google Analytics:

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address for Member States of the European Union as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA. On behalf of the website provider Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website provider. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. Furthermore you can prevent Google’s collection and use of data (cookies and IP address) by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB. Further information concerning the terms and conditions of use and data privacy can be found at http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/gb.html or at https://www.google.de/intl/en_uk/policies/.
Please note that on this website, Google Analytics code is supplemented by “gat._anonymizeIp();” to ensure an anonymized collection of IP addresses (so called IP-masking).